As you know, we have four little boys running around the house — though I’m somewhat hesitant to use the term “little” since they’re growing so fast. Anyway, with that as a backdrop, I thought I’d share some thoughts on the transitions from zero to one child, one to two children, etc.

Zero to one: Monumental. Having your first child results in an infinite increase in the number of kids in your house. Life will never be the same again. But that’s a good thing.

One to two: Doubling the number of kids in your house. A major change, but not as big as the first one. And you’re still not outnumbered.

Two to three: Thus is a smaller proportional increase, but now you’re outnumbered. In basketball terms, you now have to switch from a man-to-man defense to a zone defense.

Three to four: Life is so out of control at this point that you’ll hardly notice the change. Not really, but kinda. Having a new baby with three other kids running around is a challenge, but by this point you’re sorta used to the chaos.

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Very timely – my husband and I recently found out that we are about to become parents. We’re expecting our first child in September – we have enough time to come to grips with the idea, but not really enough time to plan for our lives to be turned upside down!

We’d been married 10 years before we received our adoptive placement of sibling brothers and that was a real shock to go from zero to two kids (at the time they were 3 years and 15 months respectively) at once. Four months later, their older sister moved in. A year-and-a-half after the first two came, a new baby moved in and just over one year after that, kid #5 joined the family. I always tell people that going from 0-5 in four years is pretty insane especially when we got them all out of age-order (3 boys, 2 girls; current ages are 13, 8, 6, 3-1/2 and 3), but I think things happened so fast that we didn’t have time to adjust! Life in our house is absolute chaos, but we’re loving (nearly) every minute of it. Just very, very, very tired. 🙂